


One Single Thread of Gold

by WildnessBecomesYou



Category: Ratched (TV)
Genre: Angst, Depictions of Abuse, F/F, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Scars, gwen's a softie, homemade solutions for things that should be dealt with in a hospital, lovin on old wounds, mildred is incredibly soft for her wife
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:09:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27224782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WildnessBecomesYou/pseuds/WildnessBecomesYou
Summary: Mildred has scars, and those scars come with stories. She decides to tell Gwendolyn about them one morning.
Relationships: Gwendolyn Briggs/Mildred Ratched
Comments: 37
Kudos: 168





	One Single Thread of Gold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anonanon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonanon/gifts).



> Yes I said wife in the tags, fight me, they're married
> 
> Song title from the Taylor Swift song Invisible String, because it's pretty and the end of this fic made me think of it. "One single thread of gold tied me to you"????? God. 
> 
> Okay but seriously, I'm going to depict some pretty bad scenes through Mildred here. Particularly the big scar. If you're triggered by or squicked out by physical abuse, then stop reading after “There were all sorts of things in the last house Edmund and I were together.” and pick back up at “I’ll never touch it again if you don’t want me to.” 
> 
> Be gentle with yourselves, my loves, especially now. 
> 
> Thanks to anonanon for requesting this :)

Mildred likes waking up in Gwendolyn’s arms. They’re secure, wrapped around her middle as they usually are, and they hold her to Gwendolyn’s body. It’s comforting to feel Gwendolyn’s breathing first thing in the morning— it reminds Mildred that she’s alive, that they both are. Gwendolyn’s arms and body are warm against her. They make waking up pleasant. 

She can’t really remember a time when she felt that. 

She finds it just as comforting, somehow, when she wakes up on her back with Gwendolyn sprawled across her. When Gwendolyn’s head has fallen to her shoulder; when her arm slings itself over her waist; when their legs tangle together in the middle of the night and she wakes unable to move and not minding it at all. It holds her down, it keeps her in bed for those first few minutes before Gwendolyn wakes. She can focus on Gwendolyn’s breathing. She can listen to and feel how relaxed this woman is with her, the rise and fall of her chest, the way her fingers seek out Mildred’s skin even in her sleep. 

And she’s gorgeous, when she wakes up. The sun has no chance of rising before Gwendolyn is within Mildred’s sight, really— the way her eyes light up that brilliant blue-green, like ocean waves down the drive to Monterey; the way her hair frizzles out with morning mess and frames her face perfectly; the way her eyebrows furrow as she tries to remember who and where she is, before it resolves into that sugarcane smile before Mildred can even breathe her in. 

Sometimes they wake up the way they went to sleep, Mildred’s head against Gwendolyn’s chest, ear pressed to the flat of it to help her hear Gwendolyn’s heartbeat. She’ll drape an arm across Gwendolyn, her hand landing at her hip or at her shoulder. Gwendolyn will cradle Mildred in her arms— maybe she’ll pull one of Mildred’s legs over her own. But Mildred will feel safe and held and protected. She always feels that way when Gwendolyn is holding her, and the mornings where she wakes up like this are the best of them all. 

She wakes up to the sound of Gwendolyn’s heartbeat one morning, shifts slightly to test whether her shoulders will ache. There’s a burn, but it’s no more than the way her body usually feels on waking. 

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” she hears from above her. She lifts her head— 

Gwendolyn is smiling at her, and she outshines the morning sun, and Mildred is kissing her before she knows that she moved. 

Gwendolyn chuckles into the kiss, brings her hands up so that her palms are against Mildred’s cheeks and fingers teasing into her hair. Mildred leans her hips to the side— she’s effectively on top of Gwendolyn now, and Gwendolyn makes room for her, her legs opening to give Mildred a place to rest. 

Gwendolyn often jokes with her that they ought to brush their teeth before kissing like this. Mildred refuses to leave the safety of their bed without at least one kiss, and she doesn’t mind if it gets heated like this. The bed is warm, and Gwendolyn holds her, and she’s— 

_In love._ She’s in love. 

Gwendolyn wraps her arms around Mildred, and Mildred knows she’ll be on her back in a few moments. She strains up as Gwendolyn tries to pull back, and for once, Gwendolyn actually lets her. And then she feels the pillows behind her build so she’ll be propped up. She smiles against Gwendolyn’s mouth and leans back into the little soft mountain Gwendolyn has built her. 

Her heart flutters. For once, she doesn’t feel like running to match it. 

“You’re thinking,” Gwendolyn murmurs, looking down at her fondly. 

“Admiring,” Mildred corrects. It’s husky. Her voice is always that way this early. Gwendolyn says it’s sexy. 

Gwendolyn chuckles. She leans down and presses a short kiss to Mildred’s lips. “Let me do the admiring.” 

Gwendolyn slides down her body, pressing kisses to the morning-cooled silk of Mildred’s nightgown. Mildred leans back and relaxes into the little nest she’s been made. She’s amused that she can still perfectly see what Gwendolyn is doing— she’s struck again by that blooming of love, the way it seeps into her bones and soothes the aches that still echo in her soul. 

Gwendolyn looks up at her. She’s checking in with Mildred, and she sees the smile on Mildred’s face, echoes it with one of her own. Mildred reaches down for her and brushes her fingers against Gwendolyn’s cheek. Gwendolyn leans into it, closes her eyes like a cat stretching in the sun. 

Eventually Gwendolyn returns to slithering down, her hands bunching up the nightgown against Mildred’s thighs. 

Mildred had mentioned, once, why so many of her night things are silk. She’d told Gwendolyn she likes the way the fabric slides over her skin, never catches on it. She likes the fact that it’s soft. She likes to pretend she has the means for and deserves that luxury. 

Gwendolyn had ground Mildred’s hips down onto her thigh while pressing a kiss to her cheek, whispered “I’d buy you all the silk in the world, you’re my queen— just like that, baby.” 

Mildred drifts back to the present as Gwendolyn presses a kiss to the side of Mildred’s right thigh. Her lips brush over the scar tissue there, and Gwendolyn’s eyes close and her fingers go soft in the silk. 

“I broke my leg when I was eight.” It tumbles out of Mildred without her permission. Gwendolyn pauses, her lips still against the puckered flesh, eyes flicking up to Mildred’s. “I was in the woods behind where I was placed, and I climbed up on some rocks. It was rainy, and I slipped, and landed on that leg.”

Gwendolyn winces, then frames Mildred’s thigh in her hands, lets her forehead drop to the top of it. Mildred breathes in the silence, matches her breaths to the ones she feels on her skin. 

“That had to have hurt,” Gwendolyn murmurs. She tilts her head and rests her cheek on Mildred’s thigh, now, and Mildred thinks she may have bedded herself an angel. 

“It did,” she admits. “Went clear through everything. I walked home. The mother at that house was a nurse, so she set it.” Gwendolyn places another kiss to the spot, runs the pads of her fingers over the skin. “I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere for a long while, had to stay in the house. Did a lot of cooking in that place.”

She can see information clicking into place for Gwendolyn. She’d already told Gwendolyn about how fearful she was when first learning to cook, how bad things would be if she cooked something poorly. Gwendolyn frowns deeply.

And then, suddenly, it softens. “How brave you are,” she murmurs, places another kiss to the skin. Mildred props herself up and buries her hand in Gwendolyn’s hair. She tugs at the messy curls and Gwendolyn relents, moving away from Mildred’s thigh. 

She immediately lands on the opposite thigh, just below where her hip starts. She places a little kiss on each of the circles that sit there. Mildred huffs. 

“I know what these are,” Gwendolyn says into her skin. Mildred hears it. She shakes her head slightly. “You don’t have to tell me about these.” She brushes her thumb over the spread of cigarette scars. 

Mildred takes a deep breath. “It was a punishment. If we ever went over the time we had to eat.” She swallows against the memory, focuses on Gwendolyn’s eyes staring up at her. “He, uh. He would do it to both of us. Used clove cigarettes, said they burned hotter.” 

Gwendolyn’s eyes close for a moment while she breathes in through her nose. She returns to Mildred’s thigh, takes her time pressing her lips to each scar. When she’s done, she lifts her head and very surely states “Clove cigarettes are disgusting.” 

Mildred smiles, just a little. “I prefer your menthols.” 

Gwendolyn smiles, rubs her thumb over that marred swatch of skin. Mildred thinks she should feel overwhelmed— she doesn’t. She feels Gwendolyn’s warmth against her legs, her hands on Mildred’s hips, her eyes cycling over Mildred’s face. 

Mildred pulls up her nightgown just a bit, until the scar on her right hip is visible. Gwendolyn moves to it immediately, draping herself over Mildred’s hip and leg to get there, pressing her lips to the top of it and working her way down. Mildred closes her eyes and leans back into the pillows behind her, grateful that she can let her body go. 

She feels Gwendolyn pause about halfway through the scar. “Are you breathing?” Gwendolyn asks. 

Mildred giggles slightly. “Yes.” 

“Hmm.” She continues down the scar, works her way back up. Mildred reaches down until she feels the feather-softness of Gwendolyn’s hair. She giggles again when Gwendolyn pushes up into her hand. 

“Kitten,” Mildred says fondly. Gwendolyn freezes. Mildred feels it, bites her lip nervously, wonders if she’s just messed this rosy moment up. 

“Did you just—?” Gwendolyn looks up at her, and before Mildred can register the look in her eye, she’s trying to explain herself.

“B-because you’re like a cat? When they press up against— and you kind of… purr…” 

It finally hits her that Gwendolyn is biting her lip against a grin, the lines by her eyes deepening as she smiles. Mildred huffs as her panic fades. Her hand slips to Gwendolyn’s cheek.

“No fair,” she mutters, and Gwendolyn turns her head to kiss Mildred’s fingers before she takes them gently in her teeth. “Hey!” 

“Love bites,” Gwendolyn chuckles, presses her lips to Mildred’s fingers again. Then she returns to Mildred’s hip, nuzzles into it. 

Mildred keeps a hand in Gwendolyn’s hair. “Another foster kid did that to me,” she says. 

She can feel Gwendolyn’s eyebrows furrow against her. 

“He didn’t mean to. The— uh, man? Of the house—“ 

“Doubt he deserved that title,” Gwendolyn mutters darkly, fingers tracing up and down the scar. 

“No,” Mildred admits quietly, “I don’t think he did.” She’s rewarded with Gwendolyn’s cheek to her hipbone, the smile on her face tangible. “But he startled the little boy, when the little boy was peeling potatoes, and I was standing just a bit too close, and, well…” 

Gwendolyn’s hands have landed on either side of Mildred’s hips. She presses a kiss to Mildred’s stomach and the muscle there jumps. 

“I stitched it closed myself. I used green thread, because that’s what I could find, and obviously I did a terrible job, and Edmund thought it had gotten infected because of the thread.” 

“You—?” Gwendolyn pauses, raises her head and lifts the hand covering the scar to look at it. She has to tilt Mildred’s hips so she can actually look at it, and Mildred does her best to ignore just how Gwendolyn is cupping her backside. “That’s not a bad job. How old were you?” 

Mildred thinks for a moment. (It’s harder to do that when Gwendolyn’s hands are on her.) “Twelve? Maybe?” 

Gwendolyn doesn’t say anything, just presses a line of kisses along the scar. 

Mildred knows what’s next. The big scar, the one across her chest. 

And she’s ready. It surprises her, but she’s ready for it. 

Gwendolyn slides her hands up under the silk, content to rest against Mildred like this. But Mildred sits up slightly, Gwendolyn whining as she’s unseated, and pulls the nightgown over her head. She tosses it aside and Gwendolyn’s face follows the noise while she lies back down. 

Gwendolyn’s eyes miss the fact that the scar is exposed. Mildred blushes and brings her arms up, folds her hands together against the dip between her collarbones. Gwendolyn immediately reaches up, brings Mildred’s hands to her mouth, presses little kisses on her knuckles. 

Gwendolyn peppers kisses across her collarbones, too, and the feel of Gwendolyn’s hips pressing just below her own is just enough to keep her grounded. Keep her thinking about how she’s going to explain the scar that covers the widest portion of her. Keep her repeating in her brain that Gwendolyn loves her, won’t leave her over this. 

Gwendolyn kisses down between Mildred’s breasts until her lips land on that scar. She pauses, eyes still closed against Mildred’s skin. Mildred cards her fingers through Gwendolyn’s hair and she smiles, moves down towards her hip, back up towards her breast. 

“There were all sorts of things in the last house Edmund and I were together.” 

Gwendolyn doesn’t stop, fingers tracing the scar, but she lifts her head and looks to Mildred. 

“Things that— they didn’t use those things on us, didn’t make Edmund use them on me, but sometimes I’d see the— the people in the audience use on each other while they watched us.” 

Gwendolyn doesn’t stop looking at her. Her face is an anchor, even if her eyes are bluer than usual. How do her eyes change like that? How do they show her emotions so clearly? 

Mildred steels herself. Her voice is too small, but Gwendolyn will hear her, and she has to do this. “Except for one time. We were trying to hide, before dinner, and we ended up in the room where they kept a lot of those things.” She pauses, bites her lip, and Gwendolyn reaches up to tug her bottom lip free. Mildred lets her. 

“The wife found us. She was angry. Really, really angry.” 

“Mildred, it’s okay.”

“I know.”

“No,” Gwendolyn says, her hand on Mildred’s jaw. “I— we can do this later, if you want to. We have time.”

“I can do it now,” Mildred breathes, turns her head to kiss Gwendolyn’s palm. “I’m okay.”

Gwendolyn nods. Her fingers go back to tracing the scar. 

“The wife, in her anger, picked up a cane and smacked Edmund so hard she knocked him out.” Gwendolyn winces in sympathy, and Mildred’s chest warms a bit. “She found a… I don’t know what it was, actually. It almost looked like a bigger spoon, but there were little sharp points on the sides.” 

Gwendolyn’s eyes widen. Her hands hold Mildred’s sides tight to her, and her body is warm, protecting her from the cold air outside of her embrace. Mildred is afraid of ghosts, but she’s not so afraid when Gwendolyn is there to protect her. 

“She didn’t hit me with it. She chased me around backwards, swinging the thing around. I screamed for Edmund to wake up, but he didn’t— couldn’t?— and then I tripped and she cut me with it.” 

“All the way across you?” Gwendolyn asks, and it’s breathless, like she’d been that night, like Gwendolyn is reliving the pain for her. 

“I bled. I bled a lot, until her husband found us and kicked Edmund until he was awake, made him hold my skin together while he beat his wife unconscious.” She swallows, her mouth suddenly very dry. “Then he took the cane she’d used to hit Edmund and cracked it across her—“ 

“Mildred.” She says it when Mildred cuts off, reaching out to her and lifting herself, pressing their foreheads together. Her thumbs brush across Mildred’s cheeks and Mildred realizes she’s been crying. 

But she has to finish this. “And she woke up, screaming. He made her stitch me closed, and then he beat her in front of the people who’d come to watch Edmund and I.” She pauses again, takes another breath, listens to Gwendolyn’s breathing. “They didn’t… make us go on stage that night, or for a few nights. So I guess we got a break.” 

It’s a weak attempt at a joke. Gwendolyn ignores it. 

“I’ll never touch it again if you don’t want me to.” 

It’s so sure, such a committed answer. But that’s not what Mildred wants. 

“Could you, actually?” It’s shy. She kind of hates that it’s shy. Gwendolyn waits for further instructions. “It helps, when you touch it. I— I’m not afraid when you do.” 

Gwendolyn smiles and kisses her so softly she thinks she might break apart. Then she moves down Mildred’s body and nuzzles into the top of the scar, her temple brushing against Mildred’s breast. 

She goes so slow that Mildred’s eyes are forced close, shutting one sense off so she can tell that Gwendolyn is moving at all. Her lips leave no inch of the ever-pink skin untouched. By the time she’s reached Mildred’s hip again, the world has gone a little hazy, a little rosy, and Mildred doesn’t know this feeling but she likes it. 

“Sweetness? You still with me?” 

Mildred opens her eyes with some effort and looks to Gwendolyn. “Come kiss me,” she beckons, and Gwendolyn does. 

Her weight is so comforting, and she drapes her legs over Gwendolyn’s, wraps her arms around Gwendolyn to keep her close. It’s soft, and Gwendolyn isn’t asking for more than just the press of lips against lips. Gwendolyn murmurs little words of praise until Mildred’s world has gone rosy again. 

Eventually, it all blends together, until Mildred doesn’t have the strength of will to keep kissing Gwendolyn. She kisses her once, twice, three more times, then ducks to the side and presses her face to the side of Mildred’s. Mildred concentrates on breathing. 

She doesn’t know why she says it— force of habit, maybe. “I’m sorry. None of that is very pleasant.” 

Gwendolyn lifts herself so that Mildred is looking straight at her. “Don’t be sorry. It’s good that you can tell me these things. Let me take the burden for a while.”

Mildred frowns, tries to settle on the words she wants to use. “You don’t— you shouldn’t carry it alone, it’s mine to hold.”

Gwendolyn shakes her head. At least she’s got a fond smile on her face. “Not alone. It’s easier when we share it.” 

Mildred doesn’t argue. She doesn’t want to. She’s learning to like sharing her life, learning to want to. 

So maybe she can share this, too— 

“Don’t they make me…ugly?”

Gwendolyn’s startled. Mildred can see that. “Darling,” she breathes, “darling, no, you’re the furthest thing from ugly. You’re so beautiful you take my breath away without even trying.” 

Mildred knows she’s blushing. Her face is too warm. She turns her head, and Gwendolyn places a kiss on her cheek. “I’m not.”

“You are,” Gwendolyn insists. “Why do you think I asked you to drive to Monterey, hmm?” 

Mildred looks back up to her. She knows she can challenge Gwendolyn, and Gwendolyn will prove her wrong. “But that was before you saw the scars.” 

“Did I push you away when I saw them?” Mildred shakes her head in answer. “No. I chased after you, didn’t I?” Mildred frowns at the memory and Gwendolyn kisses it away. “Your scars are a part of you. They’re a record of the life that you’ve lived, of the life that’s brought you to me. I wish it had been an easier road, believe me—“ her voice breaks a little and Mildred pulls herself closer. “But it still lead you to me. And I will spend every second of the rest of my life thankful it did.” 

“That could be a long time,” Mildred says apprehensively. 

“I hope it is. It still won’t be enough.”

She’s so sincere. Mildred loves that, loves that she can believe anything that comes out of Gwendolyn’s mouth. 

Everything feels so new. So when Gwendolyn finishes kissing her again, she chases after her lips with a quiet “Good morning, I love you.”

Gwendolyn smiles. “I love you. Good morning.”

**Author's Note:**

> How we doing, babes? Hanging in there? 
> 
> One more 'till longfic! 
> 
> Drop me a line <3


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